Politics

I’m starting to hate writing about government politics. It’s not just because my posts with politics in them are the least noticed. It’s also because politics, in any language, is distasteful, distressing and depressing. I’m sure some of those who drop by to read my blog feel the same.

As much as I would want to spare all of us from having loose bowels or fits of nausea, I feel it is my duty as a citizen to give an update on what the elected circus freaks are doing.

1. This week, the Speaker of the House lost his seat and, not surprisingly, has bitten the hand of the Ewok that fed him. After having had his seat taken right from under him, De Venecia is not taking things sitting on his rump on the house floor. He has spoken about the festering corruption in the Ewok’s palace. Beware oh short one, he knows the skeletons in your closet by name. I would have wanted to say, “Bravo De Venecia,” but his performance and stunning oratory are four years and millions of dollars too late. Do we even have to wonder why? Yung mag wawander pa, talagang slow!

2. Jun Lozada apparently has a story that does confirm that the First Gentleman and former Commission on Elections chief Abalos did get their hands mired in the anomalous $329 million broadband deal. While I am writing this piece, a certain scary administration senator with a foreign accent is banking on the power of her hard to understand vocabulary and atrocious diction to confuse people and discredit Lozada.

Are your bowels still intact? More importantly do you even care?

*Video credit:1piso/T.V. Patrol

NEWS FLASH! If you don’t watch Pinoy Big Brother or Marimar, you probably wouldn’t know that these primetime mind numbing programs were interrupted by breaking news. At around 8:15 this evening a bomb blew up the southwing lobby of the session hall of the House of Representattives. As of 10 p.m. one is confirmed dead while twelve are injured including Cong. Wahab Akbar, Cong. Luz Ilagan and Cong. Henry Teves.

Check your noses. That’s not the scent of Christmas we’re smelling but that of explosive powder, charred flesh and political intrigue.

Apparently, recent events in our country have shown that there really are far worse things than death or manic depression.

The barangay is supposed to be the smallest unit of the Philippine government. You would think that fewer people would make a mad scramble for smaller positions of governance. The recently concluded barangay elections however has yet again proven me wrong.

Three days ago the dark side came by in a motorcycle handing out bunches of paper. From one bunch I was handed a P200 bill ($4.53). I may be hugely ignorant of the ways of this world but there was no mistaking what the bill was for. Now, whenever I pass that candidate’s campaign poster I seem to hear it whispering, “Luke I am your father. Come to the dark side with me.”

The encounter changed my perspective in more ways than one. All of a sudden, posters of candidates began to look much like western style WANTED posters to me. It also occurred to me that our bills should stop bearing the faces of heroes and past presidents who were honorable men and women. They’re probably turning in their graves right now, knowing what their images and names are used for.

The incident also gave me my first glimpse of the real state of affairs. Here I was ranting and raving for months about the corruption and poverty that I never really personally experienced. The small temptation that was momentarily dangled in front of my nose to convince me to turn to the dark side was the first time I felt I finally knew what I was talking about.

It’s just like what Jose Rizal, the national hero, implied. Society is afflicted with social cancer. If he could say that about his society a hundred years ago, I wonder how he would assess our society today. By all means we should be dead by now, having been afflicted this long and this severely but it seems we have mutated into those Hollywood type zombies who never seem to stay dead even after getting whipped by the corrugated bottom of Mila Jovovich’s boot.

Last week’s news more or less fit my previous post to a tee. Our congressmen returned to their districts late last week after a meeting at the presidential palace. Cagayan de Oro City District 1 representative Rolando Uy brought home more than just a lung full of Manila smog. According to Congressman Uy, they were each handed cash gifts.

Gasp! Are they at the semantics game again? Call it what you will. A wolf in sheep’s clothing is still a wolf so a “cash gift” handed out in that manner is still a ______________ (fill in the blank).

I suppose hard earned taxpayers’ money is once again lining the silk pockets of politicians and is nowhere near being used to finish moldy, decade old projects. In a twisted kind of way, this makes tax evasion a little attractive, doesn’t it?

I was on my usual mode of seat warming and writing vapid articles that don’t really matter when I received the message of the decade from my mobile phone service provider. Estrada is guilty of plunder.

Of course there was no doubt that he would be found guilty but writing about this one piece of news is like treading on thin glass. I suppose that if we had a totally blameless government right now I would have gone on in sparks of approbation over the verdict. Right now though, I don’t feel like saying that justice has prevailed. That would make me sound like Ignacio Bunye or all the other lying, cheating folks in the administration who are no better than Estrada. That would be like rejoicing over nabbing a robber when an equally big heist is being performed in front of us.

If justice always prevails then why is Arroyo not on the docks too? Even if she does ever find her neck on the noose, the future of our country will be grimmer than ever because we don’t have very palatable choices. The future candidates for president are divided into two groups. One group supports a former thief and the other supports the reigning thief. Now tell me, where is the lesser of two evils in that? Come on, they’re all of the same color but are just in different pirate boats. They’d as much feed us to the sharks as they would each other.

So right now I just feel like shutting up and getting depressed.

I don’t like Dan Brown’s books very much but I give the guy credit for his ability to weave confusing technical details like he understood them himself. If he ever runs out of hodge podge crap to write about I suggest he visit the Philippines, the new seat of political crap with intrigue on the side.

The most recent addition to the government’s growing list of Guinness book worthy anomalies is the National Broadband Network (NBN) plan. What started out as a plan to connect all the government agencies and offices (despite the fact that a lot of seat polishing officials really don’t know the difference between a network port and their ass holes) is now a scheme to steal millions of dollars in tax payers’ money. Unless you’ve probably been living under a rock for the past month, you should have heard that the government made a grossly overpriced $329 million deal with Chinese telecommunications company ZTE without telling the Filipino people even though we will eventually be footing the bill.

This story simply has the ingredients of a good bestseller—corruption, intrigue, more corruption, duplicity, idiocy and even an ALLEGED sexual romp by a 73 year old government official with Chinese prostitutes. The best thing about it is that the details are muddled. Even the usually finger-in-your-soup media can no longer tell the difference between fact and fiction. Who could tell when Teves says she met with Abalos and ZTE people once to talk about NBN but Abalos says there were two meetings but no NBN discussion? Who could tell when Favila and Apostol claim that there was no contract but Mendoza and Formoso say that there was a contract that was stolen and reconstituted? What do they take us for, idiots? The monkeys who orchestrated this circus fracas obviously didn’t practice before they mounted the show or simply underestimated audience intelligence.

Just recently, the plot has thickened. Senate’s resident snoop dog Panfilo Lacson says an unfortunate soul is willing to testify against the monkeys. He is unfortunate because I suspect that his integrity will be questioned and ripped to shreds as to make his and his family members’ lives virtually unbearable. They would either have to hide in the mountains or in some other God forsaken continent like Antarctica.

Oh, and what about the victims in this story? They’re all too busy watching Marimar and Ysabella or scratching out a living in the streets to even give a damn that the administration has climbed over their backyards again and stolen what little they have.

For more on the NBN circus, do visit Jaspitz’s World.